gadgets and technology

My colleague had problems connecting his brand new Samsung Galaxy Advance, running Android 2.3.6, to the Enterprise mail server. After configuring his device he received the message:

Congratulations! After connecting your mobile device to Exchange Server 2010, you can now send text messages from Outlook 2010 and Outlook Web App on your computer. You can also receive and reply to text messages.

But he didn’t receive any mails or calendar items.

During my investigation I logged on to the Exchange 2010 server and run the Powershell command Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics –mailbox [user]. In the list of configured devices that are able to synchronize with the Exchange server I saw his old Windows Mobile phone and his Android phone. For the Android phone the LastPolicyUpdateTime and LastSuccssSync fields where empty.

I removed his mobile devices from the ActiveSync by using the command Remove-ActiveSyncDevice –Identity[id], (probably the following will also work: Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics –mailbox [user] | Remove-ActiveSyncDevice, or definitely Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -mailbox [user] | %{ Remove-ActiveSyncDevice –Identity $_.Identity}). After I removed the devices he was able to successfully connect his phone to the Exchange server.

Users can also remove unused Mobile Devices themselves by using OWA. Going to Options -> All Options -> Phone you can see all the registered mobile devices connected to the mailbox.
What I noticed is that since Exchange 2010 SP1 the amount of mobile devices that can be synchronized with the mailbox is limited to 10. When this amount is reached no new devices can be connected to the mailbox and old devices need to be removed.

I think this is something to keep in mind when users complain they can’t connect their new phone to the Exchange server. The amount of devices can be changed using the Set-ThrottlingPolicy command.